Newcastle Have Work To Do To Qualify For Europe

Newcastle have now lost three successive Premier league games, although to be fair two of them were against two of the top three teams in the league Arsenal and Manchester City.

Alan Pardew – wants changes made for PL clubs We lost at West Brom after Mathieu Debuchy managed to get himself sent off and there was that simply unacceptable performance in the FA Cup against Cardiff, and we’;ll leave it at that.

Alan Pardew has said recently he wants to finish in the top four but Newcastle are now 8 points out of 5th place with every team above Newcastle having won over the weekend, and Arsenal playing today at Aston Villa.

So we have obviously lost a lot of ground with those three defeats, and it will not be difficult to finish in the top five to ensure European competition next season.

Alan Pardew was asked about Europe yesterday and whether that was still a target, and he talked about changes needed for Premier League sides:

“Yes. I think there might be a situation where maybe the agenda will change in terms of the fixtures. “It’s something I will be pushing for if we get close, the Premier League to try to help us, let us play on a Monday night or on a Wednesday.”

“And try to approach UEFA about that. The stats back up the suggestion that it’s too early for teams to play that quickly.” “For us, the most important part is to attack every game.”

“We have the same points total as we did when we finished fifth after the same amount of games, so we have got to take that belief into the second half of the season and try to improve on it.”

We wouldn’t be too upset if we didn’t qualify for the Europa League this season, with all those games and little to be gained from that competition in terms of prestige or money – although the Champions League is different.

But not particularly wanting to qualify for Europe is a bit wimpy, because if we are to become a top club again, we have to be in Europe and we have to be in the Champions League.

That’s the challenge that Mike Ashley should be confronting, but all we heard from Joe Kinnear in the program notes for yesterday’s game was the club was under tight financial controls. 🙁

We keep hearing that from Joe and Alan, and it’s probably an attempt to quell the rampant ambition of the Geordie fans.

11 comments so far

I think the ref is making up excuses. If the ball struck Goufran he should have blown up straight away. If he needed to consult with the linesman to find out that Goufran was in an offside postion he shouldn’t be a ref. He was useless and a prancing prima donna. The problem with a lot of refs is they are egotistical prats who think the game is about them. We cannot have a game without them but at the top level with livlehoods at stake, the management and result of the game should not come down to interpretation by an inept or corrupt individual.

Morning all Are we all still hung over from the game yesterday after that shocking decision to rule out Mr t’s screamer. For all you neggars out there, We have played all the top teams now and have either beaten them or should have had a deserved draw. This player has been “pardewed” that player has been “pardewed”……..what a load of crap!! if we would have had a bit of lady luck on our side this season we could have easily been 6th in the table.And after last years shambolic turmoil I think that this season is a massive turnaround. That’s not just my opinion but a shared opinion of all I sit around most home matches in the platinum. I don’t know if was a rumour gathering pace around the ground yesterday, but quite a few guys were saying a guy called Louis laros was at the ground which is siem de jongs agent.I was just sounding out to see if anyone else heard this at the match yesterday ??

I think what most sensible anti-pardew fans have is the view that we play well and attack big sides, really give them a game but role over and play poorly and in his own words ‘to contain’ teams like cardiff, west ham, etc….

if we could just play with that intensity every week and that attacking mentality we’d not slip up so often against lesser teams.

the annoyance comes because pardew has shown he is capable of setting his team up to attack and play well but for whatever reason the lads can’t do it enough against the “lesser” teams.

@jazzyp: “if we would have had a bit of lady luck on our side this season we could have easily been 6th in the table”

And if we had not have lost a game, we’d be top.

It’s one of those things, mate. While we gave a brilliant performance yesterday, we didn’t do enough in the final third. Crosses to Kompany or not enough effort to get behind the defenders. Had we have landed a few more crosses onto players in black and white, the disallowed goal would have been less painful. The frustrating thing about last night is that we didn’t really threaten, or make much of an effort to threaten. Four strikes stand out to me: That one. Remy from a corner, Cabaye from so far out he had no right to be taking a shot (but it was a beauty all the same) and Cabaye trying to take on Hart from practically behind the goal.

TS I feel that for some reason or another the players don’t seem up for the fight against so called lesser teams this term. I don’t know if they feel kike they have more to prove against the big boys…….who knows. Last week against Cardiff my wife and I had left before the final whistle because at times it was like watching paint dry,But yesterday the ground was rocking from start to finish.My concern is we desperately need a CF as Cisse looks like he’s already left us and to be fair Remy seems to have his mind else where as well

Personally I think video replays need to be brought in but only to determine whether it’s a goal or not, we have goal line tech, there was a break in play as it was an offside given it would have taken 10 seconds to check shorter than what happened yesterday! The problem is referees who are riffing games with the top sides will always favour them as it’s all about glory, and who is in the title race, what if it had been 2nd to last game of the season and that had seen us drop into the relegation zone?? That’s not in referees minds it’s teams are fighting near the top that are always getting decisions because it’s easier for them! Imagine man utd with Sir Alex in charge this would be spoken about for months because it could cost them a title! But because we are not in that ‘group’ that don’t have much to.play for referees see it as insignificant

That Mbiwa tackle was really poor. Nasri was in tears. I understand it was emotional because of the circumstances surrounding the disallowed goal and also that we were pushing hard for some time for the equalizer when the player burst clear, but even so, Mbiwa appeared to willfully and malignantly kick a fellow pro, possibly endangering his season and perhaps his World Cup hopes. Wouldn’t object to some retrospective punishment for that. Poor form. Although I’m sure Mbiwa himself now feels quite sick about it and I sincerely hope Nasri is not badly hurt.

The problem with comparing this season to our season finishing 5th is that we brought in Cisse that year who proceeded to score in every game after that. I don’t see much chance of Joe bringing in a striker who’s gonna do that again.

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